Ohio's Defender of Miscreants, Dogs, and Underdogs

My father got his driver's license in 1934, when he was 12. He sat on a cushion to peer over the hood. As a kid, he'd seen Hollywood stuntmen driving cars through giant haystacks, so he tried it himself in a '36 Ford DeLuxe Tudor touring sedan, hoping to impress the girl who would become my mother. "I didn't know haystacks could freeze," he explained as they picked twisted Ford parts off their laps. They didn't date for a while after that.

After they got married, my dad bought a '48 Buick Super convertible, which he promptly drove to his parents' house to demonstrate his success as a fledgling lawyer. Before arriving, he flicked one last secret cigarette butt out the window, then pulled into the drive. When the relatives gathered on the rear porch to view his shining Buick, it was my grandfather who spoke first. "Nice car," he offered, "but you should've bought one that wasn't on fire."

His next big purchase was a black '58 Cadillac whose hydraulic suspension raised and lowered at random intervals, making it look like a dog lifting its leg on a hydrant. In Ohio's Hocking Hills, the car became mired in mud, and when the sinking rear corner wouldn't rise on command, my father squeezed the throttle until the engine vomited a nice collection of valves.

"In this life," he calmly explained to the family, "you sometimes have to teach a car a valuable lesson." The Cadillac endured a lengthy warranty sabbatical, then we put my pet sheep, Stanley, in the back seat and drove him to a farm in Delaware. So the car learned a second valuable lesson.

He ordered a 21-window 1964 VW microbus that he picked up in Southampton, England. Our family occupied that bus for 10 weeks while touring the Continent. When my father tired of driving — usually in the Alps and once in downtown Milan at rush hour — he'd leap from the driver's seat and demand that my sister, Angela, and I join him in a rousing chorus of a song he'd composed called "George Washington Bridge," whose lyrics comprised those three words alone. It wasn't a bad song.

My father's longest-lived car was a black 1960 VW Bug he bought used from our neighbor Wally Trotter. Shortly thereafter, he drove the thing into the Olentangy River to see if it would float, but the water was so low that he simply stepped out and turned the opportunity into a free wash. The Beetle had a folding sunroof through which he stuffed our Christmas trees for 10 years and out of which he'd occasionally toss the car's keys to prove he could coast the last quarter-mile to our house. If he made it all the way up our drive, my sister and I had to walk south down McCoy Road to retrieve the keys. One set disappeared forever after tinkling through a sewer grate.

With a famously nervous lawyer friend riding shotgun, my father once ran the Beetle out of fuel in desolate Amish country. The engine died at the top of a long hill, and at the bottom, as if by divine intervention, sat a new Pure Oil station. My father coasted right past it.

"What, are you blind?" screamed his colleague. "You just passed a gas station!"

My father turned casually and said, "Not my brand."

He installed three engines in that VW and drove it 250,000 miles, then traded it for a 1971 olive-green Toyota Corolla 1600. The Toyota salesman, afraid he'd offend my father, wrote the VW's trade-in value on a scrap of paper, then pushed it across the table. The amount was $23.75.

"Well, it's a deal," my dad replied, "but only if you explain the 75-cents part."

He owned a blood-red '67 Mercury Cougar whose fuel filter was prone to clog. On Easter day, the 289-cid V-8 quit 11 times on the way home from Chicago. The car was later stolen from his office, exactly what it deserved. He owned a white 1970 Audi 100LS that required front brake pads at every oil change, and he broke off its shifter three times to let it know he disapproved. He bought a gorgeous hand-pinstriped 1971 Dodge Charger that he wrecked on a rainy night in front of the Ohio Penitentiary. On the day it was repaired, he pulled out of the body shop and traveled 12 feet before a mechanic rammed him head-on. The second round of repairs took so long that he lost patience and stopped by the shop unannounced. There sat the Dodge, shining and ready, but all of the body-shop employees were at lunch. My dad thus lifted the keys and, by the time he arrived home, was wanted by the Columbus police for grand-theft auto.

Straight from a succession of tiny convertible VWs, my father embarked on a weird love affair with massive Cadillac limos, one of which was black. With my sister and mother sitting way, way in the back, he drove to the Hilliard Country Fair, where a guard mistook him for the mayor and waved him right onto the midway. At a stately 2 mph, my father happily drove past Ferris wheels and corn-dog stands and instructed my mother to wave as if she were the Queen Mother, while my sister, totally mortified, dove for the floorboards.

He later made it up to her. After she'd put in 30 years as a French teacher, he chauffeured her in a royal-blue 2000 Rolls-Royce Corniche the length of the Upper Arlington Fourth of July parade, encouraging spectators to applaud her public service.

He believed that $3 worth of gas was plenty for any car's tank and was thus often stranded. On a 100-degree day, he ran out of fuel in a sea-green 1988 Fleetwood limo on I-75 near Toledo. My 92-year-old grandmother asked, "Is something wrong?"

"No, Mom," he assured. "The car's just resting, and I feel like a walk."

He drove me to Watkins Glen for more Can-Ams and USGPs than I can count and sat with me through five Trans-Ams at Mid-Ohio. In a white '78 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith II he drove me to the restored home of his hero, humorist James Thurber (C/D, July 1990), and the two of us entered his black '62 Eldorado Biarritz convertible in the biggest Cadillac show ever, where it finished third ["Stage Fright on Fin Alley," November 2002].

He was a lifelong defender of miscreants, dogs, and underdogs, and he gave money anonymously to charities. Just before Christmas, John D. Phillips Jr. died at the age of 83. He left behind the black Eldo and the white Silver Wraith, two cars that pretty much matched his personality. I took them out for a spin last week but didn't get far. Both were out of fuel.